"Ladislas Starewitch, born
1882 in
Moscow
to Polish-Lithuanian parents, was responsible for changing stop-motion from a
technical novelty to a storytelling art form, much like Walt Disney did for 2D
cartoon animation. Starewitch grew up with a keen interest in art and entomology,
collecting and studying all varieties of insects. While working as a film maker
at the Khanzhonkov Studio in
Russia
, he began making experimental documentaries about live beetles. His early
attempts at making the beetles do anything he wanted under hot lights proved to
be frustrating, so, inspired by Emile Cohl’s film Bewitched
Matchsticks, he rigged some embalmed beetles with wires and animated them.
The stop-motion technique applied to real insects had never been seen in
Russia
, and many audiences thought that the beetles had been trained to “act” by
some odd form of science. In one of his most humorous films, Revenge of the Cameraman (1912), Starewitch told a silent tale of
adultery between a group of suburban insects. This was one of the earliest known
attempts to actually tell a real story exclusively with stop-motion puppets.

"The success of these insect
films led Starewitch to move to more detailed puppets made of metal armatures,
wood, felt, and chamois leather. Due to the growth of the Communist regime after
World War I, he moved to
Paris
in 1920 and began producing two to three films a year. His stories were
inspired by Eastern European folklore and fairy tales, ranging from gentle
children’s stories like Voice of the
Nightingale (1923 ; Hugo Riesenfield Prize winner 1925) to bizarre horror/fantasy
films like Fern Flower (1950). The
level of detail and emotion that Starewitch was able to inject into his
characters was outstanding for the time the films were made, especially those
with several different puppet characters, such as The Old Lion (1932). This film featured a flying elephant nine years
before Disney created Dumbo (1941),
and his 1928 film The Magic Clock
featured his own daughter escaping the hand of a giant, similar to scenes from King
Kong. These scenes are just a few examples of how Starewitch was very much
ahead of his time and had an impact on other filmmakers. Many of his films also
featured a motion blur technique for certain quick puppet movements, which may
have been created by smearing Vaseline on a plate of glass in front of the
camera, or by using wires.

"One of the Starewitch’s
most famous and elaborate films was The
Mascot, which was released in 1933, the same year as King
Kong. Framed by live-action sequences, The
Mascot tells the story of a small dog toy that goes on a quest to find an
orange for hungry little girl and ends up at a party thrown by the devil and his
guest list of grotesque characters. The macabre imagery of The
NightmareBefore Christmas and modern tales of toys coming to life (such as Raggedy
Ann or Toy Story) could certainly have been influenced by The
Mascot and other films by his creative storyteller. Many of Starewitch’s
films are lost in the annals of history, but enough of them remain to inspire us
today."